Megan McArdle, on Gleick

Megan has done good work on this from the first, probably better because she’s actually a believer in the CO2AGW hypothesis. Here’s my favorite quote from today:

There’s been a bit of back and forth with some correspondents, asking why I was not outraged about the East Anglia hack? Interestingly, no one has asked me why I wasn’t outraged by the Buffalo reporter who called Scott Walker pretending to be David Koch–which seems to me to be a closer parallel.

There are a lot of answers to that, but the largest is that I am not surprised by leaks–but I was very surprised that a man of Gleick’s stature would take this sort of risk, on such flimsy evidence.

Scientists and journalists are held to higher standards than, say, your average computer hacker. Trust in our work product is dependent on our personal integrity, because it can’t always be verified independently.

Impersonating an actual person is well over the line that any reputable journalist needs to maintain. I might try to get a job at a Food Lion to expose unsafe food handling. I would not represent myself as a health inspector, or the regional VP. I don’t do things that are illegal–at least, not things that are illegal in the stable western democracy in which I live.

Nor would I ever, ever claim that a document came from Heartland unless I had personally received it from them, gotten them to confirm its provenance, or authenticated it with multiple independent sources.

And ethics aside, what Gleick did is insane for someone in his position–so crazy that I confess to wondering whether he doesn’t have some sort of underlying medical condition that requires urgent treatment. The reason he did it was even crazier. I would probably have thrown that memo away. I might have spent a few hours idly checking it out. I would definitely not have risked jail or personal ruin over something so questionable, and which provided evidence of . . . what? That Heartland exists? That it has a budget? That it spends that budget promoting views which Gleick finds reprehensible?

I think Megan’s one missing step is this: he knew he was doing it In A Noble Cause. Humans seem to be capable of nearly any foolishness in a noble cause.

Charlie Martin writes on science, health, culture and technology for PJ Media. Follow his 13 week diet and exercise experiment on Facebook and at PJ Lifestyle

There’s a boiler-plate paragraph that’s been documented over at Watt’s Up With That in the comments section. A number of commenters have found something about Gleick being a hero and a self-sacrificing martyr.

Here’s what’s funny: the paragraph appears on different websites under different names/nics.

I’m surprised the moderators haven’t noted it yet, or made a separate post of it. It’s very, very similar to the Daily Kos piece.

And ethics aside, what Gleick did is insane for someone in his position–so crazy that I confess to wondering whether he doesn’t have some sort of underlying medical condition that requires urgent treatment. The reason he did it was even crazier.

Nonsense. He’s now a left-wing/MSM hero. He’ll end up making twice as much money as a talking head. He’s now the “go-to” guy for climate and the environment. Paul Ehrlich will be forced into retirement. The left-wing/MSM now has a shiny new incredibly geeky looking expert with tons of street cred.

What seems so strange to me is that I’d long ago consigned Peter Gleick to the category of Bay Area crank. His screeds on the SFGate site were scroll-over material for me (and, I suspect, a lot of people who read Brights).

Megan McArdle’s remark about what Gleick did being insane for someone in his position read very oddly; it’s hard to remember that he was respectable.

Charlie – You quote Megan McCardle as saying: “Scientists and journalists are held to higher standards than, say, your average computer hacker.” All I can say to that is, really? Most of the climate ‘scientists’ who believe (and I use that word in its theological sense) in AGW are not scientists; they are liars (as in ‘Hide the decline’) thugs (as in attacking an editor of a journal for allowing an article by a skeptic to be published) and they are now criminals.

As for journalists living up to higher standards, has Ms. McCardle been reading ‘newspapers’ lately. There is as much news in them as in Investia and as much truth in them as in Pravda. Indeed, most large newspapers today print only news that fits their views.

First, I wasn’t aware that anyone had ever shown that East Anglia was hacked, rather than leaked. There is a difference, at least in my mind.

Second, hacking/leaking is one thing. Forgery and fraud are something completely different.

Perhaps you could argue that the legit Heartland docs that Gleick “social engineered” out of some poor schlub are the equivalent of the East Anglia documents. Although requires believing the worst of the East Anglia release (that it was obtained by a hacker who cracked their computers, rather than leaked by a whistleblower) and the best of Gleick.

But those are peripheral, and always have been. The main issue here is the forged document, for which there is no East Anglia counterpart.